The MLK Recuperative Care Center, open to patients starting Jan. 5, is housed in a former dormitory for Charles Drew University medical students. | Marc Trotz, LA County Department of Health Services

Next month the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services plans to open a recuperative care facility adjacent to the Martin Luther King Community Hospital. The facility will treat homeless patients who have been discharged from the hospital or the nearby county-owned Martin Luther King Jr. Outpatient Center.

“If you’re homeless and you’ve been discharged from the hospital you often don’t have anyone to treat your wounds, change the dressings or help you manage with a broken leg,” said Marc Trotz, director of DHS’ Housing for Health program. “You can’t deal with these conditions properly if you are living on the streets.”

The MLK Recuperative Care Center, which will begin accepting patients Jan. 5, will be housed on the hospital campus, in a former dormitory for Charles Drew University medical students. The center will have 50 rooms and 100 patient beds, making it the county’s largest facility of its kind.[Read more…]

L.A. to Extend Shelter Program for Homeless: With winter setting in and an El Nino weather pattern eyeing California, officials extended a campaign to help nearly 26,000 homeless people by opening public buildings as temporary shelters. (Fox News)

Gregorio Rojas stands with his most recent cohort of students who participated in his coding boot camp. | Photo courtesy of Gregorio Rojas

Coding boot camps, long on the fringe of traditional education spheres, are pushing their way into national conversation of how to attract more Americans into the STEM fields.

These boot camps, a product of the technology boom, are technical training programs designed to expose novice students to the most important aspects of the coding and web development field while guiding them to become innovators. Oftentimes boot camps lead students into jobs in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics industries.

Last month, the Department of Education rolled out its pilot program, EQUIP. The program, which is now open for application, allows colleges and universities to partner with non-traditional education models like boot camps, and gives students access to federal financial aid.

EQUIP is part of a growing initiative to help underwrite the cost of attending satellite programs that train students in career fields the country needs–particularly in the STEM fields in which the Obama Administration has encouraged more growth.

Yet, the concept of the recent policies supporting coding boot camps is not new in South Los Angeles. EQUIP would be supporting an educational model that has already taken root in the area, some educators say.

A few years ago, Gregorio Rojas and his wife founded Sabio, a startup focused on providing software development training to women and minorities. At Sabio, students spend 6 to 12 weekends in intensive programs learning to code, develop software and hone technical skills. At the end they hold the promise of standing on their own in the competitive STEM industries.

“One reason I do this is because I pretty much learned this way,” Rojas said of the boot camps. “It’s hands on, on the job, intense and very focused. I got into the industry right before the dot-com bubble burst. These skills facilitated my own entry.”

His coding boot camp is based in Culver City, but Rojas said many of his students have ties to the South L.A. community.

At boot camps, students spend hours learning code language — not from a book, but by implementation. The experience is intense, but the success of the methodology is proved each time Rojas’ students walk away with a firm grasp of the material and are later gainfully employed. Many times, students participate in hackathons, holding their own against competition.

Gregorio Rojas (left) celebrated the launch of two of his students’ apps to the Apple Store. | Photo courtesy of Gregorio Rojas

Recently Rojas celebrated the launch of two students’ app now featured in the Apple Store. Both creators of the app had been in two wildly different fields before the coding boot camp; one was a Spanish professor and the other was working in the financing world. At Sabio, the average student is a 30-year-old, according to its founders.

In the basement of South LA’s Southside Church of Christ, Chris Baccus also runs a coding boot camp — this one aimed at middle schoolers. Baccus, executive director of Concerned Citizens Community Involvement, helps run the camp on Saturdays. In one year, seventy students have gone through the non-profit’s Limitless STEM Academy.

The wide range of participant ages for the coding boot camps in South Los Angeles show the demand for alternative education models. Generally the camps are also less expensive options when compared to the norm.

At Sabio, a three-month program costs $13,450 though it is set to increase 7 percent to $14,450 in 2016.

Comparably, the estimated yearly cost for attending the University of Southern California, a four-year semi-private institution is $67,212, while the all-expense-covered yearly tuition for a University of California school is $33,600 for in-state residents. At a California State University such as Cal State LA, to receive a computer science degree, students would pay around $32,240. Most students would quadruple these costs during the four-year pursuit of a bachelor’s degree.

Baccus’ Limitless STEM Academy held on Manchester Avenue and Harvard Boulevard is free of charge for the middle school students.

Rojas sees EQUIP as a federal commitment to embracing more innovative styles of teaching and a sign that this type of instruction is working.

“People are going to start waking up and realize that what they do is not traditional but it’s theory,” Rojas said. “Those institutions want to tap into these resources and bring them into the fold. These are conversations that have been happening for at least a year now.”

Boot camp organizers said they not only see such programs as great supplements to educational systems for their students, but in some cases their curricula can help drive STEM instruction in the traditional classrooms.

Baccus pointed to the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has been struggling to integrate emerging technology into its curriculum.

“I’ve worked at LAUSD for 17 years so I understand the challenge that some of our schools have in implementing innovative programs because everything is all-around taught to a test,” Baccus said.

Not discouraged, Baccus said he’s looking to spread his program into Inglewood and Compton to reach more students.

“In the future we want our students to be able to be problem solvers because that skill never grows old,” he said. “As technology advances, it just becomes an easier way to solve a problem and if you can, then you’ll always have a job. You don’t wait, you create your own opportunity.”

Baccus has talked to academics at traditional colleges who have requested his help trying to integrate structures like that of Limitless STEM Academy into their classroom. One philosophy the boot camps have integrated is the dedication to serving underrepresented communities, such as women, African American and Latino populations. They’re helping to facilitate the next generation of minority students entering the tech field.

“[At Sabio] you have a Latino immigrant and Latina CEO coming out here and running things,” Rojas, who is a Colombian immigrant, said. “I don’t think you’re going to find something else like this.”

Rojas’ wife and Sabio co-founder, Liliana Monge, is Mexican and grew up in South Gate. Baccus also said he believed his students seeing other people of color working in tech encourage them to continue breaking into the ever-changing industry.

“The more qualifiers you have, the easier it is for minorities to sit at the table with people who may be unfortunately less qualified, but may have a network that allows them to get opportunities that we traditionally have been left out of, especially in STEM and technology and computers,” Baccus said. “Any more ammunition they get to put in their toolbox is absolutely great.”

Diversity, however, is not just essential in South Los Angeles. Diversifying the industry overall breeds better innovations in the field.

“Coding software development is supposed to be one of the leading innovative industries in the world – in the planet really, but by design for a bunch of different factors is the least innovative group out there,” Rojas said. “We don’t have enough women and people of color in the room to challenge the other folk in the room.”

Baccus hopes that the progress in terms diversity and technology will continue to take root, and eventually become a requirement for younger students.

“I would love to see [EQUIP] interfused with the curriculum for students even before high school to give them the skills they would need,” Baccus said. “Help them do that self-discovery before they get into those pathway programs.”

L.A. officials set oil drilling terms but fail to enforce them: Despite the existence of over 1,000 oil wells in Los Angeles, many have been improperly regulated by officials who have failed to ensure that residents are protected. South L.A. sites, including the AllenCo near USC, have exposed Angelenos to harsh odors and highly toxic chemicals. (LA Times)

Firefighters responded to a fire in an industrial area early Wednesday morning. (Intersections South LA)

Chunk of city block destroyed by fast-moving flames in South L.A.: Several businesses were destroyed Wednesday morning after a fire in an industrial neighborhood in South LA began. Firefighters are unsure of the extent of the damage at this point in time. (LA Times)Facing the Challenge of Violence in South LA: Rising violence in South LA has attracted media attention across the country. But understanding the history of South LA and the current climate is crucial for deciphering risks and making the neighborhoods safer for residents. (Huffington Post)

The USC Speakers Committee holds talks throughout the year related to topical issues.

A stream of videos depicting police brutality continued conversation over current relations between the police and communities of color at USC.

An event titled “Trending Topics: Police Brutality,” held at the University Park campus, highlighted how excessive force caught on tape has kept these events in the news.

A New York Times’ video compilation of the most well-known instances of police brutality caught on mobile phone cameras in this past year was shown to the 35 USC students. USC’s Speaker Committee and Black Student Assembly hosted the on-campus event.

The mostly full room was filled with tudents, many of whom weren’t born when the 1991 video of Rodney King’s beating was captured on tape.

Many analysts mark that video as the beginning of of police brutality being recorded. In the Rodney King video tape, taken by witness George Holliday from his balcony, a group of four LAPD officers is shown continuously kicking King and beating him with batons. Their acquittal is generally believed to have incited the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Moderator Jody Armour, a professor at the USC Gould School of Law, said this fact has been taken for granted. Though the King beating occurred 24 years ago, he said, it remains in the forefront of people’s mind.

“It was the first time you have a video tape spark this kind of prosecution. Now we take it for granted,” Armour said.

The other moderator Judy Muller, a USC journalism professor who covered the Rodney King trial almost 25 years ago, said incidences of police brutality continue to be on the public’s radar because of the rise of technology.

“We are in a major communications revolution,” Muller said. “This makes everyone with a phone a journalist.”

Armour contested the idea that police brutality is not a wide scale issue. He said a faction of people feel that police violence is not an issue because “blacks kill more blacks than police ever could.” But Armour said the difference between black-on-black crime and police brutality is that officers have a responsibility to protect the people and not do harm.

Muller reached back into history to show the different reactions to news events by playing a clip of groups of white people and groups of black people watching the outcome of the 1995 OJ Simpson case. Where black people were overjoyed, white people held expressions of discontent. The professor said this clip showed the disparity between the “racial perceptions of police.” She says white people see the police as serving justice whereas black people feel threatened by police.

She says the rise of social media and the prevalence of unedited videos of the events still elicits different perceptions of events from racial groups, contrary to what one would expect.

These racial perceptions likely reflect the phenomena of mass incarceration, the moderators said. Mass incarceration is the increased rate in imprisonment of black people in the U.S. since the 1980s as a result of strict drug laws with unintended racial implications. According to Pew Research Center, in 1980 10% of black men aged 20 to 29 without a high school diploma were in prison, where that had raised to 26% by 2010. This is compared with the statistic that in 1980 only 4% of white men aged 20 to 29 without high school diplomas were in prison and this raised to 7% by 2010.

He stated a main issue in the criminal justice system is that Americans have been conditioned not to “view criminals through a lens of human frailty,” but rather, with a sense of hard justice.

When the floor was opened for questions, one student called attention immediately to the fact that the audience did not in any way reflect the demographics of USC. One black person commented “props to the three white people here” and she claimed that the issue of police brutality for many can be a She wondered what students can do to keep the conversation about police brutality going.

Another student said for her, when she is the only person of color, discussions can be “emotionally exhausting.”

Muller told students that they had to be unafraid and bring their concerns up in the classrooms.

Event coordinators said this was one of many goals for the event and they hoped it raised awareness that creates dialogue between students and experts.

Armour and Muller said there are current movements that are helping to expand the dialogue. They specifically highlighted the social movement of #Blacklivesmatter, having the potential to make changes in America.

#Blacklivesmatter is a movement with roots in social media that aims to put an end to stereotyped views of black people as dangerous based on their skin color.

But, “We’re not there yet,” Muller said. “We still react from our racial backgrounds…How many video tapes we have to view before that changes?”

South LA residents are weighing the benefits of a proposed $1.2 billion development that promises to add condos, a hotel, a grocery store and hundreds of permanent jobs to the community.

About 60 community members came to the South Central Neighborhood Council’s town hall meeting to voice their opinion on The Reef Project. The project is an expansion around the current Reef building, which serves as a space for small creative businesses. Parking lots cover the rest of the two-block area bordered by Hill Street, Washington Boulevard, Main Street and 21st Street.

Attorney Edgar Khalatian said the REEF Project will support affordable housing. | Photo by Rachel Cohrs

The development also would add a pharmacy, retail space, a bank and open pedestrian spaces.

If the project is approved, it is projected to create 2,758 temporary construction jobs and 751 permanent part- and full-time positions, most of which would be in the hotel. Thirty percent of the construction and hotel jobs would be filled by people living within a five-mile radius. An apprenticeship program is being developed through Los Angeles Trade Technical College to provide training for local residents to qualify for the positions.

Out of dozens of resident questions submitted, a central question emerged: What’s in it for us? Residents at the meeting on Sept. 19 at Santee High School voiced concerns that the project wouldn’t cater to their needs.

“They are trying to make us feel like we are privileged that they are coming here, but they should be coming in on our terms and asking what we want it to look like,” said Adriana Cabrera, education representative for the Central-Alameda Neighborhood Council and co-founder of Empowering Youth in South Central.

How Reshanda Gray went from South Central LA to the WNBA: A WNBA star plans on launching a foundation for young girls in her home city to introduce them to sports and put them on the path to college. Reshanda Gray credits basketball with providing her with an education and a better life. (Huffington Post)

Report: Westsiders Live Five Years Longer Than Other Angelenos: A study from the USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging reports that South LA residents die an average of five years earlier than their West LA counterparts. There are also fewer than 50 physicians for every 100,000 people in South LA, compared to 1,000 per 100,000. (Santa Monica Mirror)

Los Angeles neighborhoods suffered power loss after a record storm. (Caitlyn Hynes / Intersections South LA)

Storm Knocks Out Power To 8,200 LADWP Customers: Rain and wind caused power outages across Los Angeles. South LA was especially hard hit with 1,636 customers in the dark, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. (CBS Los Angeles)

Donors raise nearly $40k for brothers stabbed to death in South LA: Donations poured in to a family grieving the loss of three brothers after police say they were killed by their father last week. A relative’s GoFundMe campaign successfully raised enough money for the funerals and to move the boys’ mother’s grave to be near theirs. (Daily News)

Clippers’ $3 million gift helping City Year’s work in 26 LAUSD schools: South Los Angeles schools that host AmeriCorps City Year teams will benefit from a generous gift from the Los Angeles Clippers. The $3 million gift to the nonprofit will allow the Los Angeles chapter to hire more staff to serve students in under-performing schools. (LA School Report)